In this age of information proliferation, it is becoming harder and harder to determine what documents influenced the creation of other documents. For example, a high level manager of a company may be reading a particular document as a part of making decisions. The manager may want to revisit the thought process that went into the concepts described in that particular document and discuss the thought processes with the people who contributed to the concepts. Determining what documents influenced the creation of the document enables determining the people who contributed to the concepts and revisiting the thought process that went into creating the concepts. What documents influenced the creation of a particular document is commonly referred to as “provenance” or the “provenance question.”
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